


Variations on the Word Sleep

by rainbowgoddess



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-11
Updated: 2011-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-17 22:37:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowgoddess/pseuds/rainbowgoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny discovers that Steve is having nightmares, and Steve discovers that Danny is good at chasing nightmares away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Variations on the Word Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by a Margaret Atwood poem of the same name.

Danny was tired.

In fact, Danny was beyond tired. If there were a state past "sheer exhaustion," he was pretty sure he was past that, too.

It had started out when he'd been up all night with Grace, who'd picked up some form of stomach bug. He'd gratefully given her back to Rachel, who was able to stay home with her during the day, before heading to work with no sleep. Then they'd received an assignment that had him and Steve staying up all night on a stakeout. Then they'd spent the rest of the day doing whatever other tasks Steve had found for them to do — his head was kind of fuzzy on the details — until Danny had been ready to drop.

Steve had been completely oblivious to Danny's fatigue. Maybe SEALS were trained in the art of sleep deprivation. Danny had certainly complained enough, but Steve had learned long ago to tune out Danny's complaints.

Finally, Danny's body just gave out. Steve found him in his office with his head on his desk.

"Hey, Danny, you all right?"

Danny opened one eye groggily. "I'm sleeping. Leave me alone."

"That doesn't look like a very comfortable place to sleep," Steve observed.

"I can't drive home in this condition," Danny explained. "Do you know how many accidents are caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel?"

"No," Steve answered. "But I imagine it's similar to the number of motorcycle fatalities you tried to tell me about a few weeks ago."

Danny didn't answer, because he'd fallen asleep again.

"Let me take you home," Steve said to him, shaking him awake.

"Home sounds nice," Danny admitted. "I have a bed there, if I recall correctly. It's been a while since I've seen it, though, so I'm not sure."

Steve hauled Danny to his feet and, slinging Danny's arm over his shoulder, walked him out to his car. Danny got into the passenger seat and was asleep again in seconds, so Steve fastened the seatbelt for him.

When they arrived at Danny's place, Danny woke up and stumbled to his door. He had a little trouble with his key, though, so Steve took it from him and unlocked the door for him. Danny fell face-first onto his bed without taking his clothes off. Steve removed his shoes for him, and then decided he may as well do the rest, so he removed Danny's tie, shirt and trousers as well, leaving him in his boxers.

He was about to leave when he realized something: he'd driven here in Danny's car. His truck was still at headquarters. He could drive Danny's car back there, or he could drive home in it, but that would leave Danny without a vehicle. He knew that Grace had been sick, and he didn't want Danny to be without transportation if she or Rachel needed him.

Steve was pretty tired himself. He'd had a little more sleep than Danny had, and he'd become used to sleep deprivation in the military, but he was pretty fatigued, and in the military he'd been trained to grab any chance at sleep when he got it.

The way he saw it, he had a few choices. He could walk back to headquarters to retrieve his truck. He could walk home and have Danny pick him up in the morning. He could call a cab. Or he could sleep with Danny.

Sleeping with Danny was a wonderful and frightening proposition.

Steve stripped down to his own shorts and climbed into bed beside Danny. "Move over, Danno," he said, and Danny obliged by scooting over without even really waking up.

When Danny woke up an hour or two later, it was to a sensation that he hadn't felt in quite a long time.

He was being _cuddled._

There were strong arms around him and a warm body spooned behind his. He and Rachel had slept that way sometimes, but he had usually been the outside "spoon."

And this was definitely _not_ Rachel. It wasn't even a woman. Besides which, he was quite sure he'd remember having brought a woman home with him. At least, he hoped he would.

The arms that were wrapped around him had tattoos on them. Familiar tattoos. That meant that the person who was holding him was Steve McGarrett. Okay, that solved one mystery — the identity of the person sharing the bed with him — but left another. Why was Steve in his bed, and why was Steve cuddling him?

He decided not to worry about it for now. He was still pretty tired, and if the fates had decided to drop Lt. Commander Steven McGarrett into his bed, he wasn't going to argue with them. He was going to enjoy it for as long as it lasted.

Danny soon dropped off to sleep again, enjoying the feel of Steve's arms around him.

Another couple of hours later, Danny woke up again. He reluctantly extricated himself from Steve's arms, as he had to use the bathroom. He stayed in the bathroom for a few extra minutes just thinking about the situation he'd found himself in and wondering how, exactly, Steve had wound up in bed with him. He vaguely recalled falling asleep in his office and talking to Steve about not wanting to drive home in case he fell asleep at the wheel.

Had Steve brought him home? Maybe. He really couldn't recall getting undressed and getting into bed. It was kind of like having a blackout after being drunk, especially the part about waking up in bed with somebody without remembering how they got there.

One thing he knew for certain, though: he didn't want this to end anytime soon. He'd go back to bed and climb in next to that lovely, muscled, tattooed man and stay there for as long as he could.

Meanwhile....

Steve was having that dream again.

In th dream, he walked out of Iolani palace to see his teammate with a bomb attached to him, just like he had at Christmas time. Only it wasn't Chin Ho that had the bomb; it was Danny. He couldn't touch Danny. He couldn't even get close to him. He couldn't tell him that everything would be okay, because he didn't know that everything would be okay.

Then the scene changed to him fighting with Victor over the detonating device. But this time Victor won, and the bomb went off. Steve woke up screaming, as he had many times since their real-life nightmare before Christmas.

Danny heard the scream and came charging out of the bathroom. "Steve? What's wrong? What's the matter?"

Steve was horribly embarrassed. He'd had this dream before, and he'd woken up screaming before, but never when there was anyone else around. He was grateful that he lived alone. "Sorry to frighten you," he said. "I had a nightmare."

Danny got back into bed beside him. "Must have been a pretty bad one to cause you to yell like that. Want to talk about it?"

"No," Steve answered.

"Then do you want to talk about how you ended up in my bed?" Danny asked.

He wasn't sure which was more embarrassing to explain: the nightmare or being in Danny's bed. But he explained about not wanting to deprive Danny of his car and deciding to "sleep over," as it were. "I would have asked if it was okay with you, but you were kind of dead to the world." Then he flinched involuntarily at the word "dead." It reminded him too much of his dream.

Danny found Steve's explanation to be quite interesting. He was a little disappointed, he had to admit, that it had merely been a matter of practicality that had landed Steve here with him, but it didn't explain the cuddling. He wasn't going to ask about that, though. "Well, since we're both here, and it's the middle of the night, we may as well get some more sleep."

Agreeing to this, Steve turned over and went back to sleep almost immediately. Danny had hoped that Steve would put his arms around him again, but Steve had turned his back to him, so it didn't look like any cuddling was going to happen anytime soon. So Danny lay back and tried to fall asleep himself.

He failed miserably. He could not get to sleep. All he could think about was how much he'd enjoyed the feeling of Steve's arms around him, and how much he missed that now. He got out of bed, made himself a cup of coffee and watched his partner sleep.

Before long, Steve started to get restless. He tossed back and forth in the bed without waking up. He started to say something. Danny couldn't catch it at first, but then he realized that Steve was saying his name. He was saying, "Danny." He also said, "Victor," and "No!"

Danny got into bed and put his arms around Steve. He started talking to him gently, not wanting to startle him or wake him too abruptly. "Steve," he said softly. "It's me, Danny. I'm okay. I'm right here. Nothing's happened to me. I don't know what you're dreaming, but it's not real — okay? Wake up, buddy."

He didn't know how long he held Steve, but eventually Steve seemed to calm down. He stopped moving around and relaxed into Danny's arms without waking up. Danny wished he could go into Steve's dream and fix whatever it was that had upset him so much, but Steve seemed okay now, so maybe it had fixed itself.

Eventually, Danny fell asleep, still holding his partner in his arms.

The next morning it was Steve who woke up to the sensation of being cuddled. Like Danny, he was also not used to it. But he definitely liked it. He moved around carefully so that he could take a good look at his sleeping partner without waking him.

Danny was beautiful.

There was something about seeing Danny this way, so quiet — more quiet than Steve had ever seen him, definitely — so still, just lying there, sleeping peacefully. Steve just watched him like that for a few minutes until Danny woke up and the spell was broken.

They lay there looking at each other for a moment or two, and then Steve gave in to temptation and kissed Danny very gently. Then he waited to see what the response would be.

The response from Danny was immediate. He kissed Steve a lot less gently than Steve had kissed him.

The two of them continued to kiss, and soon Danny's hands moved down to Steve's boxers. Steve quickly removed them, and then he removed Danny's for good measure. They soon discovered that Danny had no lube in his apartment, but they were able to pleasure each other with their hands and mouths.

When they were done, Steve felt ready to fall asleep again, and going to sleep in Danny's arms sounded like a really nice idea. First, though, he called Chin and told him that he was giving all of them the day off, and asked him to pass the message on to Kono.

"So now that you've given us the day off, what were you planning on doing?" Danny asked when Steve hung up the phone.

"Staying right here with you," was Steve's immediate answer. "That is, if it's okay with you."

"That depends on what your intentions are toward me," Danny answered with a smile.

"Right now, all I want to do is go back to sleep," Steve said. "I'm so relaxed I feel like I'm going to melt into the bed. But I'm sure we can find other things to do a bit later."

"All right, then," Danny said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "Go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

Steve patted the bed beside him. "Stay right here," he said.

Danny lay down beside Steve and took him into his arms. "I'll be here," he repeated, as Steve drifted off.

However, Danny was not sleepy. For him, sex was an energy booster. Unlike Steve, he didn't feel like sleeping. So he waited until Steve was sound asleep, and then he carefully got out of bed, careful not to wake his partner, and pulled on a shirt and his shorts. He'd said he would be there when Steve woke, and he would be; he'd get back in bed as soon as Steve woke up.

Needing to burn off some energy, Danny started doing some long-neglected housework. He tackled the pile of dirty dishes in his kitchen sink. As he worked, he listened for sounds from the bed that would tell him Steve was waking up.

The sounds he heard, though, were not sounds that Steve was waking up. They were sounds that Steve was having yet another nightmare — or the same nightmare again.

Danny climbed into bed beside Steve and started talking to him. "Steve. Wake up. You're having a bad dream. It's me, Danny. I'm right here beside you."

The dream seemed to have a stronger hold on Steve this time, because he wasn't waking up as easily as he had the last time, nor was he calming down now that Danny was there.

"I'm here for you, Babe. I'm not going anywhere. I won't leave you." He didn't know what was upsetting Steve in his dream so much, but he felt a need to reassure Steve of his presence. "Come on, Steven. Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. I love you," he added, and he kissed Steve.

Steve slowly opened his eyes and looked into Danny's worried ones. "That was a nice way to wake up," he said. "But why did you wake me up?"

"You were having another nightmare," Danny told him. "I don't know if it was the same one as before, or a different one."

With a sigh, Steve said, "There is only one .The same one, over and over."

"I get the feeling I'm involved in this dream, somehow," Danny noted. "I noticed that you have it every time I leave you alone in bed."

"Yeah, the dream is about you," Steve told him. "I keep dreaming that you're the one wearing the bomb collar, not Chin. I can't touch you, can't go to you, can't put my arms around you and hold you. I have to fight Victor for the detonating device...and I lose. I lose you."

"But you don't have the dream when I'm here," Danny pointed out.

"No," Steve said. "Last night I slept better than I have in weeks. As long as you were with me, I slept fine. There was one time, when I guess you were in the bathroom, that I had the dream, and then I had it again laterm but it changed, right in the middle. Somehow you got out of the bomb collar, and you were okay."

"That must have been when I heard you were having the dream again, and I came back to bed and talked to you until you calmed down," Danny mused. "What about this time?"

Steve shuddered. "This time it started out even worse. In the dream, Victor found out that you and I were lovers, and he was taunting me about it. But just before I woke up, it changed again. Just as the bomb was about to go off, the timer stopped counting down, and you took the collar off. Then you put your arms around me, you kissed me, and you told me you love me."

Turning a little red, Danny said, "That was because I did put my arms around you, and I kissed you, and I told you I love you."

"You told me you love me?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah. I do love you."

For a moment, Steve looked a bit stunned. Then he smiled. "I love you too, Danno."

"So what are we going to do about these nightmares of yours?" Danny asked. "Will you talk to a counsellor about them?"

"I think all I need to do is sleep with you every night. Then they'll stay away," Steve replied.

"Is that an invitation to move in with you?" Danny asked.

"It definitely is," Steve said.

"Then I accept. But if the nightmares come back, will you promise me you'll talk to someone about them?"

Steve was going to refuse, but he could see how concerned Danny was about him. "All right," he sighed. "If the dreams keep bothering me, I'll talk to someone. But I think all I need is to have you with me at night. Then I'll sleep like a baby." He reached for Danny. "You make a perfect dream catcher."

END


End file.
